Within the highly automated graphical industry for the production of periodicals and daily newspapers, printing, collating the pages of the newspaper, joining together the newspaper, for instance by glueing or stapling, and cutting the newspaper to its correct dimensions take place fully automatically through the use of various kinds of graphical machines. The finished newspapers are discharged from the production line at very high speed for packing into bales. If a separate supplement, a so-called tabloid such as an advertising supplement with dimensions which do not coincide with the dimensions of the newspaper, is to be inserted into the finished newspaper, this operation must be performed manually at a later stage, which increases the cost of production and is very time-consuming.
If, for example, the dimensions of the tabloid are one half of the dimensions of the newspaper, the procedure has already been disclosed of printing two parallel tabloids alternately with the newspaper on a long web of paper drawn from a roll, in conjunction with which a special cutting device separates the two tabloids from one another by cutting in the longitudinal sense of the web of paper. This cutting device usually consists of a rotating disc, the diameter of which is the same as the diameter of the cylinder against which the web of paper runs, said disc being held continuously in contact with the cylinder with the same direction of rotation relative to the cylinder. One half of the periphery of the disc is also provided with a sharp cutting edge, so that the disc cuts the paper for half of its rotation against the paper web and makes only light contact against the paper web for the other half of its rotation.